The Economic Crime Institute at Utica College was allowed to look through Secret Service files and they found some interesting real statistics about identity theft that tell a different story from what we usually hear. Based on their data slices:
8% of identity theft crimes are done by people who know the victim
36% of identity thieves are women. This is a higher percentage than most crimes.
9% of identity theft committed by stealing mail
$30,000 is the average loss
34% of the time, an employee stole the data used in the crime, most often one in retail
The article says one way to help stop identity theft is to report if you see people with multiple IDs with different names on them.
Study: ID thieves are strangers, often women [Red Tape Chronicles]
(Photo: d70focus)
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Why do I feel like this isn’t going to get reposted on Jezebel
@HeyThereKiller: If 36% are women than twice as many men steal identities as women.
That is why I don’t trust women.
/sarcasm
Wait… is the point of this to point out how few women steal identities or how many women steal them?
I have a solution to identity theft. If convicted, we send you to downtown Baghdad, at night, wrapped in an American flag and without shoes.
This is news? Women have been stealing the identity from men for centuries. Then they leave you and say something about not being the same man they met, with most of your money too…This happened to a friend of mine @_@
It would be interesting to see if these statistics held up with a large number of case studies. I bet the fact that they omitted cases that were only credit card fraud is what caused the drop in how many crimes are committed by people that know the victim.
@erratapage: Yeah, the title of the link is “ID thieves are strangers, often women”.
I think the point is to point how how many more women steal identities than one would gather from the stereotype that identity thieves are skeevy men.
From watching Judge Judy, I always assumed identity thieves were scheming unemployed or underemployed women or unemployed 19 year old men.
Maybe I need to get out more!
@HeyThereKiller: Ah ha! Oh but it was!
Well, the thieves can either be men or woman. I figure a +/- 2% error, which consists of cats.
Does this mean that men are also more likely to get their identities stolen? It seems to me that if you were going to steal someone’s identity you would ideally pick someone of your gender, in case you ever had to present yourself over the phone.
How many are from Nigeria?
I love things like this. Next week, we’re going to be seeing these headlines:
64% of identity thieves are men.
92% of identity theft crimes are committed by unknown assailants.
and so on
Is the hed supposed to be a joke? Extra, extra, women steal identities but not as much as men do.
Misuse of statistics.
No one should be surprised that some women steal identities…it is a nonviolent, non-confrontational financial crime, the type of crime women typically commit. Why? Because, stereotypical or not, women are nonviolent and often need more money than they can earn — and most young women are in jobs that don’t pay enough to live, particularly if they have children. I was so tempted to shoplift food back in the days when I was single parenting a child on $3.50/hr. income…which meant I didn’t get to eat every day of the month. Go figure: we should be surprised that more women in that demographic aren’t stealing identities.
My credit card number was stolen a few weeks ago and most of the spending was done at Loehmann’s, Victoria’s Secret, Nordstroms, and grocery shopping. That’s a woman.